This article approaches the medieval law of theft from a ‘functional’ perspective. It seeks, that is, to consider the rules of law principally in relation to the social circumstances which give rise to them and upon which they, in turn, have an impact. Concentrating primarily upon material from England and Wales, the essay considers general issues of definition, jurisdiction and proof in the law of the middle ages before concentrating specifically upon the rules respecting theft. The ideas of manifest and non-manifest theft are explored in an attempt to discover why the law distinguished between them. Potential difficulties concerning the bringing of theft actions and the defences which might be offered to them are also examined and related to the practical world in which perpetrators and victims of theft found themselves. Finally, the possible tension between the satisfaction of the demands of the individual victim and the wider desire to maintain public order is investigated.

The aim of this paper is to combine two types of source that are usually kept apart in the study of the Italian later Middle Ages: direct tax assessments and local court records. The purpose of putting these two sources together is to discover more about the operation of the local vicariate courts (another neglected element of Italian states) and about wealth distribution and litigation in the Italian countryside. The tax assessments are first analysed for what they reveal of agriculture, migration and wealth, then the court records for the identity of plaintiffs and defendants, and the nature of pleas. To interpret the resulting pattern of debts and credit, cooperation and conflict, concepts from English medieval historiography are used to explore the relationship between debtors and creditors.

In the eighteenth century, the condition of English wives under ‘coverture’ was both defended as one of privilege and attacked as worse than slavery. This article suggests that married women were not in reality confined within coverture's regulations on credit and property ownership. Their economic activities were fairly broad and flexible and they had an instinctive sense of possession over some goods during wedlock, perceiving their contributions to marriage as a pooling of resources for familial benefit. It will be suggested that wives did not necessarily think that their conduct in acting as if some marital property was legally theirs was illegitimate, because it was facilitated by coverture and the legal devices that allowed it to function.

This article examines the institution of retirement on some estates in Scania, the southernmost part of Sweden, in the nineteenth century. It is obvious that tenant farmers on the estates were practising the same retirement system as was customary among freeholders, that is they were entering into retirement contracts with their offspring or with a non-relative, making over the farm in exchange for board and lodging for the rest of their lives. The retirement age was about 60 for men and somewhat less for women. In this respect there was no difference between tenant farmers and freeholders. However, due to differences in property conditions and land tenure, there were other differences between these groups. Freeholders were usually able to ensure for themselves considerably better pension rights than could estate tenants. Furthermore, there are clear indications that estate owners, in certain cases, opposed early retirement or intervened in the selection of new tenant farmers as well as in the level of the pension. Possibly as a result, it was more common among estate tenants to agree a retirement contract with a non-relative than it was among freeholders.

In this study an attempt is made to examine the influence of kinship on a series of individual transitions and behaviours that mark the life course (marriage, leaving home, out-migration and mortality). Moving beyond a ‘traditional’ view, in which kinship is restricted to the cohabitation group, the study tests both the effects of the household and of the family beyond the household in order to observe their independent, opposite, or complementary actions. All these issues must be considered within the more general context of the ‘nuclear hardship hypothesis’: should family links beyond the unit of cohabitation be taken into account? How far can family support isolated people?

Using microdata samples from the 1851 and 1881 censuses of England and Wales, this article explores patterns in the employment and retirement of older men in the second half of the nineteenth century. The article argues that male labour-force participation rates were stable over these years, and indicates that the major decrease did not occur until after 1881. Despite this static picture of employment of older men, there were structural changes in the economy, demonstrated here by alterations in occupational profile. Those occupational groups shown to be in decline were more likely to have an ageing workforce. Changing age profiles of certain occupations are reported, giving evidence of deskilling and the marginalisation of older men in the workforce through technological change. This article also suggests that differences in household composition where older men were present may be related to economic activity.